Summary: Chapter 5
Power is of the individual mind, but
the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything
in the end, and only Might is Right.
See Important Quotations Explained
Sir Ector’s castle is located in the middle of a wild
English forest called the Forest Sauvage. On a hot summer day in
August, the Wart meets his new tutor, Merlyn, for his first lesson.
They stand on a bridge above the castle’s moat, and the Wart wishes
aloud that he were a fish. Merlyn transforms the Wart into a fish
and accompanies him in the moat in the form of a large, wise-looking
tench. At the behest of a roach—another, weaker kind of fish—they
visit a family of fish whose matriarch is ill, and although Merlyn
thinks she is making up her illness, he cures her all the same.
Merlyn, who wants the Wart to learn about the dangers of absolute
monarchy, brings him to visit the king of the moat, an enormous
pike. The pike, who looks a little like Uncle Sam, lazily
answers some of the Wart’s questions, affirming that power and might
are the only two things worth living by. The pike then tries to
eat the Wart, but the Wart swims away in the nick of time and is
promptly changed back into a boy by Merlyn.
Summary: Chapter 6
Kay and the Wart go hunting for rabbits. After Kay kills
one rabbit, the Wart fires an arrow into the air. A gore-crow catches
the arrow in the air and flies off with it. Kay solemnly pronounces
to his angry companion that the bird must have been a witch.
Summary: Chapter 7
One day while a sergeant at arms teaches Kay to joust,
the Wart mentions to Merlyn that he would also like to be a knight,
though he sadly remembers that he is destined to be Kay’s squire,
an unknighted assistant charged with escorting and aiding knights
on their quests. Although Merlyn seems to know that the Wart’s gloomy
prediction is inaccurate, he keeps this knowledge to himself and
says he will allow the Wart to see some real knights. The Wart eagerly
picks King Pellinore, to whom he has become attached, and he is
magically transported to a clearing in the Forest Sauvage, where
he sees Sir Grummore Grummursum challenging Pellinore to a joust.
The two knights engage in a cordial moment and then decide to joust, calling
out insults to each other in the more formal high tongue. The battle
is a silly one. Each knight is so weighed down by his armor that
neither can hurt the other. The two knights charge at each other twice
on horses and then a few more times on foot before missing each
other entirely and crashing into trees. Merlyn tells the Wart that
when the knights wake up, they will be friends. Merlyn then transports
the Wart back to the practice ground at Sir Ector’s castle.
Summary: Chapter 8
Growing bored, the Wart wanders around the castle. Merlyn
turns the Wart into a merlin, a kind of hunting bird, and puts the
Wart in the Mews with the other birds for the night. There, the
peregrine falcon, the bird in charge, asks the Wart about his ancestry
and challenges the Wart to prove himself. As a new member of the
group, he must show himself worthy by perching within reach of Cully,
the goshawk, until the other hawks have rung their bells three times. Cully,
who is so used to killing, attacks the Wart, who barely escapes as
the bells ring for a third time. In song, the birds hail him as
“the King of Merlins.”
Summary: Chapter 9
The next morning, the Wart wakes up in his own bed, and
Kay accuses him of violating curfew the night before. The Wart refuses to
tell Kay about the previous night, and the two begin to fight. The Wart
receives a black eye, and Kay’s nose begins to bleed. As Kay waits
for the blood to stop, he begins to cry because Merlyn has not given
him any of the adventures he has given the Wart. When the Wart asks
Merlyn why he ignores Kay, Merlyn replies with a parable. In Merlyn’s
story, the Rabbi Jachanan and the prophet Elijah are given shelter
by two men, one kind and one cruel. The kind man’s cow dies, and
Elijah helps the cruel man fix a wall in his house. When the rabbi
asks Elijah why neither man has gotten what he deserved, Elijah
replies that if the one man had not been kind, he would have suffered
much worse, and that if the other man had not been cruel, he would
have fared much better. The Wart continues to demand an adventure
for Kay. Merlyn finally relents and tells the Wart that Kay will
have an adventure.
Analysis: Chapters 5–9
Each of the magical adventures that Merlyn gives the Wart
seems designed to impart a carefully calculated lesson or set of
lessons. The Wart learns two important lessons from his transformation
into a perch and his adventure in the moat. First, Merlyn’s compassion toward
the roach shows the Wart that even the meekest creatures deserve
help, no matter how silly their ailments seem. Even more important,
however, is the Wart’s encounter with the old pike who runs the
moat. The old pike is the epitome of absolute might, and this portrait
of power is unflattering. When the old and evil king pike lunges
for the Wart, his many rows of teeth represent the sharp and cruel
nature that necessarily accompanies absolute power. It is relevant
that White likens the fish, with its lean, smooth jaws, to Uncle
Sam, the iconic image of the government in the United States. Written
in the late 1930s, while new superpower nations
were emerging, The Once and Future King explores
parallels between the Arthurian world and the modern one and frequently
tries to link its morals to contemporary events.
During the Wart’s time in the Mews, he sees the murderous
insanity of a military society. The birds all place a high premium
on the importance of lineage and ancestry, and they refer to each
other with military titles. Cully, who has been driven to the point
of psychotic behavior, is referred to as Colonel, but even his military
discipline cannot prevent him from acting on his murderous tendencies. The
Wart demonstrates his courage in the Mews, but his success at the
task that the birds force him to complete seems to be a hollow victory,
and even being triumphantly hailed as “the King of Merlins” is undermined
by the ridiculous trial he is forced to endure.
White renders the battle between King Pellinore and Sir
Grummore Grummursum ridiculous, using it to poke fun at traditional notions
of knighthood. The fight is relatively pointless, since the knights
turn a cordial conversation into a joust simply to satisfy the requirements
of their social station. There is also humor in the way the fight
unfolds, since each man is so heavily padded that he is barely able
to hurt the other or even see well enough to avoid running into
a tree. The fact that both Pellinore and Sir Grummore address each
other in the most formal medieval English is also humorous and allows
White to mock the formal address that is traditionally found in
Arthurian tales. Knighthood and battling play an important part
in The Once and Future King, both for the good and
the bad, but in this first chapter they are cast as little more
than good-natured buffoonery.
These chapters also foreshadow both a bright future for
the Wart and a great evil to come. When the Wart gloomily predicts
his life as a squire, Merlyn turns away with a knowing smile. The
fact that Merlyn teaches only the Wart tells us that the Wart is
somehow special. Clearly, the Wart is bound for something greater
than squirehood, but the novel gives no way of knowing that the
Wart will become the legendary King Arthur. We learn in the novel’s
first paragraph that Wart is a nickname for Art, which in turn is
short for a longer name, most likely Arthur. No other allusions
are given to the Wart’s true identity, and these moments of foreshadowing
are our only signs that something important is on its way. The crow’s
catching of the Wart’s arrow, however, indicates that the Wart’s
future may also contain dark elements. Kay’s somber statement that
the crow is a witch suggests that black magic may soon arrive to
counter Merlyn’s spells; the bird’s capture of the Wart’s arrow
suggests that the omen foretells of malice for the Wart.
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